


Home

by One_Day



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Canon Related, F/F, Haha oops I'm so late, I included some of Heather's recruitment dialogue in one scene, Nepheatherweek2017, happy domestic fluff woo, slightly OOC, so many references to other characters, takes place partly during the events of radiant dawn but mostly after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:46:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12200601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/One_Day/pseuds/One_Day
Summary: It means forever.For the day 1 tumblr nepheather week prompt, Family/Home.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> As if no one expected me to write for this prompt, if at all...
> 
> Thanks go to my friend XV and detectiveroboryan for beta-ing and providing suggestions!

Nephenee can’t believe it when she first sets eyes on the rogue, long blonde hair whipping around her shoulders as she darts across the battlefield -- hold on, did she just _steal_ a knife from that man’s belt and proceed to knock him out with it? She’s like a whirlwind, making her way through the chaos and looting whatever she comes across. The thief’s intimidating, but Nephenee knows they're going to need all the help they can get, so she grips her spear and approaches tentatively.

“Uh, hello?”

The woman groans loudly, and whips around. “Whaaat?! Do you need something?”

Nephenee flinches at the tone in her voice, but when they meet each other’s gazes, her irritated expression lights up in surprise. Undeniably good looking, Nephenee notes, but they're in the middle of a battle, so she awkwardly pulls her helmet low over her eyes and deepens her voice in hopes of sounding more confident than she is.

“Hey, y'all best... Er... You should be careful hanging around here like that. I reckon you should clear out of here while you're still in one piece.”

Nephenee winces. Why did she say that? That’s not what she had meant to say. The woman was clearly holding her own, pretty impressively, she might add.

If the blonde noticed her internal self-berating, she doesn’t comment on it, grinning wide and exclaiming, “Aww, that's so sweet of you! What's your name?”

“Nephenee…”

A nod from the other woman, who extends a gloved hand. “Nephenee... What a cute name. I'm Heather. Pleased to meet you.”

Heather, huh... Nephenee supposes it makes sense considering the shade of her clothing. It’s actually kind of endearing, to be honest. Fingertips graze lightly against her palm when they shake hands, and she vaguely registers Heather’s offer to help. Nephenee jolts and stammers out a feeble protest, but the other woman is already turning her attention back to the fight and saying, “Don't worry about it. I'm the type that likes to help nice country girls like you.”

The blatant flirtation gives Nephenee pause, ears and cheeks flushing in surprise. “Um...like me?”

“That's right.”

Not knowing how to respond, she fidgets and stares at her feet, as if she’ll find words there.

“Don't worry about it,” Heather says again, before winking and running off, whispering something feather-soft under her breath that Nephenee can’t quite make out.

“Uhhh... Yeah…”

\----------

Nephenee startles a bit at the feeling of long, warm fingers gripping her wrist. Heather doesn’t notice, just gingerly applies some vulnerary, winding a roll of gauze tightly around the gash. It's a shallow wound, where an enemy foot soldier had managed to catch Nephenee off guard during a swing, but she still lets out a soft hiss when Heather’s touch meets the torn skin. Glancing up apologetically, the rogue runs her thumb over the younger woman’s palm before returning to her task.

They're both quiet, Heather focused on bandaging the cut and Nephenee engrossed with tracing the golden haired woman’s face with her eyes, sweeping over a knitted brow, down above the curl of long eyelashes and pale cheeks to full lips. She finds herself doing that alot lately.

But Heather’s really absurdly pretty and it’s not like Nephenee is leering or anything...so it's fine, right? She’s nowhere near as crude as Gatrie, and Heather is her friend (or at least, she hopes she is). Plus, Nephenee’s seen Heather checking out plenty of other women, even those she doesn’t make advances on, so...

“Why’re ya doing this for me?” She blurts, in an attempt to derail her previous train of thought, then winces at how rude it sounds. “I mean, you’re always so _nice_ to me, checkin’ up after battles an’ complimentin’ me an’ all…N-not that I don’t appreciate it, but…”

Nephenee decides she may as well quit before she completely makes a fool of herself, and clamps her mouth shut. The woman across from her lets out a laugh, just a short breath, really, and rolls her eyes. A moment passes but seeing Nephenee’s still puzzled expression, Heather frowns.

“Don’t tell me you really haven’t figured it out.”

She shakes her head no, about to ask what could someone like Heather want with a country bumpkin with a silly accent, when the blonde sets down the roll of bandages and leans in slow until she’s barely centimeters away -- close enough for Nephenee to feel her breath ghosting over her own lips like a warm summer breeze. Her eyes are so blue (is there a name for that color? She’d have to ask Brom later) and earnest that Nephenee can't look away, just feels herself flushing warmly under the attention.

Then Heather’s hand is coming up to cup her jaw, impossibly gentle, as if she’s handling glass. Her palm is surprisingly cool against the soft skin there, and less calloused than Nephenee’s, worn instead from the versatile lightness of a dagger, not the rigid, heavy weight of a spear.

Their idiosyncrasies almost seem to play off each other in the tent’s hazy lighting. Funny how she hardly noticed before. What makes it so different this time?

Nephenee’s heartbeat jumps into her throat when Heather’s gaze flickers briefly to her mouth.

“Oh,” she breathes, but it comes out as a squeak, quiet and a few octaves too high. _So that’s it._

The corners of Heather’s lips twitch up into a smirk. “Yeah, oh.”

\----------

Heather bursts from the dark, glittering surface of the water, shaking droplets from her hair and skin, an effect that Nephenee can only describe as pure poetry.

She’s laughing hard but she still manages out between breathless gasps, “God, this is amazing. You’re amazing.” She smiles, repeats a silly phrase from the past. “Amazingly stupendously great.”

And Nephenee doesn’t know how to respond to that because she’s breathing heavily too, heart working overtime, the lack of oxygen making her dizzy. So she tucks a stray lock of wet hair behind her ear and mumbles, “Thanks.”

Heather grins like the sun, golden strands clinging to her face and neck, and Nephenee’s mouth goes dry. Despite having travelled and fought together, she doesn't know if she’ll ever get over how free spirited and bright the other woman is. Yet, when it’s her tugging the older woman by the hand to a shallower part of the river, Heather follows with no resistance.

They sit there for a while, river flowing gently around them, dappled in the shadows cast by the overarching foliage. The smiles on their faces are so big it hurts and _oh, this could be dangerous_ , Nephenee thinks, because it feels so good -- her heart light as a bird -- that she can't find it in her to worry about how far gone she is.

After all, how can she?

When Heather is reaching for her hand, turning it over to tangle their fingers together in an action so sweet it breaks her heart open to see? When Heather is bumping shoulders and pulling her to her feet and Nephenee can _see_ the three words she wants to hear plainly on the other woman’s face, clear as the azure sky above them, framed by the edge of the trees?

The rogue has always worn her heart on her sleeve, never hiding anything if she had the choice. Not that she can’t lie or trick a poor unsuspecting soldier into giving her money or food, because geez, Heather really does know how to play a person like a fiddle, the victims of which Nephenee can sympathize with. But any doubts that she might have had about the blonde woman have long been erased. Having seen Heather chasing and rough housing with her little brothers, trying to hold in giggles as they make faces at each other across the worn dinner table, having woken up wrapped in warm quilts, a pair of drowsy arms encircling her waist.

Times like those, doubts are the furthest thing from her mind.

To quote the woman herself, the moments during the war and now and everything in between have been, well, amazingly stupendously great. Huh, it doesn’t sound quite so silly in her head, because it makes sense. Really does, and Nephenee finds that she understands why Heather says it so often.

It rolls off the tongue more smoothly than she thought it would have, even from a different mouth than Heather’s, the words altered by her voice that sounds like hay and ripe corn and the crackle of the fireplace in winter.

Nephenee doesn’t even realize that she’s echoed the phrase until Heather snorts, fighting back a grin.

That confirms it: what she sees in the other woman’s face is sure and tender. There’s no mistaking the softness of her eyes, the easy quality in their exchange. Idly, she wonders if it shows on her own face too, the way she feels right now.

When Heather turns to her, Nephenee wonders if she’s thinking about time spent waiting out the rain with weapons in their hands, shivering and unsure, or if she’s thinking about smoothing out the pages of Nephenee’s old fairy tales, to be read out loud in the flickering candlelight. She wonders out of all the scenes that confirmed that this was what she wanted, which one had engraved the fact into Heather’s heart.

But Nephenee studies Heather’s eyes (cobalt blue, Brom had told her) and it’s clear that she isn’t thinking about any of that now. Not much of one for lingering doubts and long introspection, not when they’re together, when it’s going so well and she could reach out, speak up, make any and every kind of action that says what she knows so absolutely--

It doesn’t come as a surprise when the rogue pulls her into an embrace, all safety and sun-warmth. For a moment, Nephenee considers losing herself in the hands at her back and in her hair. A brief indulgence, to add to the many they've amassed in the past weeks alone. Yet she doesn't this time. She doesn't, so she can't mistake how Heather mumbles _I love you_ into her shoulder, _so much_. But it means more. That she’s decided, that this is her answer, that she’ll stay (longer than a day or a week or even a year because playing by the river and tucking her siblings into bed means...longer. It means forever. Yeah, maybe she could have forever. Maybe).

Nephenee beams brighter, says _I know_.

They hold each other close but not too close because they know that this isn't the end, just a beginning. People aren't treasures that leave if you let go. At least, not them. Heather and Nephenee are not treasures in the common sense. They are passionate and clever and insecure sometimes, worn at the edges and built to fit softly into another’s palm, like river pebbles or old trinkets.

They hold each other close, so they jolt at the same time when the Nephenee’s sister calls them in for supper, her voice bouncing high over the sweeping grass and reaching trees. Giggling, Heather stands, pausing shortly to grab their shoes tossed haphazardly on the bank. Then she comes back and offers her free hand.

“Come on, let’s head back home,” Heather says, a flicker of sadness in her eyes as she lingers over the words, almost as if she hasn’t said them before.

Maybe it reminds her of her mom. Maybe it reminds her of the things she’d done before she realized she deserved a better life than thievery. But whatever ghost it is that passes by is a problem to be caught and dealt with another time, a later time. A time when Nephenee isn’t drenched to the bone and Heather is ready to be held and opened up so all the pain and guilt tumble out. Nephenee would wrap her arms around her then, trace good memories into the angles and planes of her skin with her fingertips, weld together the broken edges and seal in the warmth and wheat-gold as best she could.

But that time is not now. Now is what Heather has just said, now is --

Home.

So that’s what this feels like... That’s the word for falling asleep next to a woman who is amazingly stupendously great, and knowing that tomorrow, when she wakes, they’ll both be there to pull up chairs at the breakfast table, maybe ruffle the twins’ hair or sneak kisses, soft and sweet like honey behind her parents’ backs, pointedly ignoring the eye rolls of her siblings. Yeah, that would be it.

Nephenee nods and takes the blonde woman’s outstretched hand.

 _Home_.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy nepheather week y'all!


End file.
